


Boys Don't Ride Pegasi

by UnapologeticallyMeatwad



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Trans, Background Trans Ferdinand von Aegir, Childhood Friends, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Pegasus Knight Hubert von Vestra, Trans Edelgard von Hresvelg, Trans Hubert von Vestra, gender nonconformity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-31
Updated: 2020-05-31
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:21:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24475669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UnapologeticallyMeatwad/pseuds/UnapologeticallyMeatwad
Summary: Though Hubert is a transboy, he still likes to ride pegasi. His bigoted father does not permit this, not knowing it is his own cis-normativity that will lead to his undoing.
Relationships: Edelgard von Hresvelg & Hubert von Vestra
Comments: 6
Kudos: 13





	Boys Don't Ride Pegasi

**Author's Note:**

  * For [idanato](https://archiveofourown.org/users/idanato/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Felix and Lysithea and the case of the mistaken identity](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21208856) by [idanato](https://archiveofourown.org/users/idanato/pseuds/idanato). 



> Dear idanto,
> 
> This fic is totally inspired by your work on [The Darkest Mage Timeline](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1536886) so I hope you like it. 
> 
> For those who haven’t read The Darkest Mage Timeline, it’s one of my favorite fic series on AO3. It’s so funny but also does so much justice for all of the characters, especially Hubert who is humanized in these stories unlike in anything else I’ve ever seen. Also… a ton of it is Gen fic which is my jam.
> 
> Thanks for all your hardwork Idanto! <3 I hope this isn’t weird to get a surprise gift like this. 
> 
> My only content warnings for this fic are transphobia and canonical major character death. Enjoy!

Hubert never much liked wearing anything that left his body feeling exposed, but shorts were definitely an exception… only in the situation of Hubert wearing shorts while riding his pegasus, Peggles.

He loves the speed and intensity of being aboard Peggles while she takes flight, he loves how the wind sends his spitcurl flying over his head, and how his bare knees steel themselves for impact against the harsh wind.

He especially loves how soft Peggles is, how warm she is to touch even when it gets colder and colder the more they ascend. He’s tried wyverns, and they are pretty gnarly, but ultimately he’s a pegasus guy.

Huber is eleven years old, and his pegasus is the only nice thing he has. It’s not even _ really _ his — Peggles belongs to one of Lady Edelgard’s (deceased) sisters. It’s a hand-me-down of sorts. 

But everything collapses in on itself when Hubert lands to find his father staring at the grass beneath them, bone white finger curled into his goatee. “I don’t understand,” he huffs.

Suppressing an eyeroll, Hubert dismounts Peggles and looks to his father. “What?” he asks innocently. He already knows what his father loathes so much about this arrangement.

“You’re telling me you want to be a boy, - - - - - -,” Marquis Vestra sighs, casually lobbing Hubert’s deadname into conversation. Huber winces until the name passes over. The Maquis continues, “Yet you ride pegasi.”

Hubert doesn’t want to be a boy, he  _ is _ a boy, but that’s not a good argument for a dolt like his father. “Pegasi are not inherently feminine, Father. Don’t be so heteronormative.”

“That’s a contradiction,” Marquis Vestra points this out as if he were a genius. With a flap of his hand, two of the family servants come out from behind him and move towards Peggles. Hubert slides in-between, spreading his arms wide.

Marquis Vestra chuckles. “Hubert, what will the people think when Lady Edelgard takes the throne and her esteemed right man is some kind of… pervert? You can’t be a boy if you want to ride a pegasus.” He laughs louder, cackles even. He delights in tormenting his son.

“I can too!” Hubert shouts. “It doesn’t matter.”

It’s not fair. Hubert’s boyhood has been tainted enough. Why can’t he just be allowed to hold onto this one thing he loves and cherishes from his girlhood? He loathes his girlhood, but that doesn’t change how much he loves Peggles, and aside from Edelgard, she’s his best friend.

“Yes, it does,” Marquis Vestra slips between gritted teeth. “I will not let you blemish the von Vestra name.”

The scary men roughly grab Peggles; it’s over now. Hubert bites his lip and looks back to Peggles and pats her one last time on the snout. “I’m sorry,” he whispers.

Then a cold, cold voice cleaves through the air and Lady Edelgard steps onto the scene. Shorter than all of them by so much (she is only eight years old and already an utter badass), it is amusing to see the lumbering Marquis genuflect to her and oh, how he _ snivels. _

Edelgard raises an eyebrow at the Marquis and whips her head towards Hubert. Ever since she returned back to the palace with snow white hair, Edelgard has acted more mature than the nobles running this country. It’s endearing, though Hubert wishes he could have done something to get keep those rat bastards away from her. 

He’s thankful she was confident enough in sharing with him the truth, at least.

There’s a lot Hubert and Edelgard know about each other — like how Edelgard was raised under a different name, a boy’s name, and Edelgard knows Hubert’s vow to her; he promises to eradicate Edelgard’s old name from memory.

But they both know this is impossible. Instead Hubert has begun working on something far more practical; using dark magic to alter and reconstruct his and Edelgard’s bodies to suit their true genders. He’s already initiated the experiment on himself, and he believes it will be safe enough soon for Edelgard to try it on herself.

But for now, Marquis Vestra calls Edelgard by her true name, Edelgard, only to her face, and insults her at the dinner table when she isn’t there to defend herself. 

“I don’t care what the people think of Hubert, nor how do I care how that reflects on me. And I don’t think Hubert does either,” Edelgard says coldly. “Your men will unhand Peggles at once.”

Marquis Vestra looks up, a speck of mud on his nose from bowing so deeply. “Apologies Your Majesty, but Peggles has already been sold off.”

“To who?” Edelgard snaps.

Marquis Vestra stifles. “To Duke Aegir. His… daughter - - - - - - - - is playing boy, just like my pathetic son. This must be corrected.”

Edelgard shakes her head and waves over to Hubert. “Hubert, come.”

Hubert follows Edelgard and she slips inside of a large hedge. They crouch within it, though it’s difficult for Hubert now that he’s hit his first growth spurt. He won’t be a child for much longer. 

“Your father,” Edelgard says, watching Hubert carefully as a cat. “He dies. Is this acceptable?”

Hubert grins. Before Edelgard was taken from him, she had spoken with him about war and he immediately began preparations.

When Edelgard was removed from the palace, Hubert had become directionless. How serious was Edelgard about her war? Should he practice and train for her so that he may be ready at her return? Well, aside from transitioning into boyhood, Hubert had nothing else so he trained. When Edelgard returned with shock white hair and eternal nightmares, she smiled when she saw how practiced with the knife he had become. All for her war.

“The most acceptable,” Hubert says. “I was going to ask you for permission if you didn’t bring it up.”

* * *

Many years into Edelgard’s war, the Black Eagle Strike Force faces off against the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus. Hubert stands besides Edelgard, face to face with Dimitri on a hill overlooking the rest of the bloody battle at the Tailtean Plains. Byleth was supposed to stand here alongside them, but the plan had to change when Lady Rhea, or rather,  _ Saint Seiros _ , hit the field. 

“You dastards,” Dimitri growls, marching through the heavy rain. “You’ve killed everyone I’ve loved so dearly, Edelgard. Now you take my people.”

Hubert coughs. “You’ve done this to yourself.”

Dimitri twitches and turns on Hubert. “This doesn’t concern you.”

“Wow, so clever,” Edelgard muses, poised as ever. She readies her ax. “Dimitri…” Then extends Aymr as if an extension of her arm, angling it towards Dimitri’s chest. “...are you prepared?”

Dimitri screams bloody murder and slashes at the ground with his Relic. Plumes of steam shoot off the shaft to Areadbhar as it digs through the grass, and then a wave of fire blisters from the ground, cutting the land between Edelgard and Hubert. 

Hubert attempts to leap to safety as his chunk of land teeters off the precipice, but a solid wall of fire deep enough to kill instantaneously separates him from her, and he falls. Hubert hears Edelgard scream and a wave of her own unholy fire blasts off the lip of the hill, at least from what he can see. Hubert can only assume that Dimitri is dead within seconds of his own death being promised to him.

Hubert cranes his neck down — up? — and catches a full-on view of the war. So many dead, impossible to tell who is friend and who is foe in this storm. His cloak wavers in the wind and he only wishes that he could have at least seen the death of Rhea, now he is uncertain if he truly did his part for his Edelgard.

Hubert’s eye catches on something. A black glint, it’s odd. Inhuman, but so much familiarity, what could —

— the eye drifts from its spot in the sky and zooms towards him. Before he can comprehend any of it, Hubert’s face falls into the bushy head of a pegasus and bounces back up in pain. He clutches his bloody nose and grabs the creature by the neck. “Bloody Hell,” he groans, noticing the blue and yellow banner of Faerghus on the pegasus’ mount. Hubert looks for an escape, surely this is a trap! The pegasus is going to bring him to Lieutenant Ingrid or something and —

The pegasus claps its wings inward and slaps Hubert across both cheeks before throttling high into the air. No time to think, he is forced to hold on tight until the pegasus lands back on the hill he fell from. Hubert stumbles off to the side and is rushed by Edelgard, who has left her burning ax besides a nearly unrecognizable corpse. 

“Oh, bless the Goddess,” Edelgard nearly screams, clamping Hubert close to her. “You’re alive.”

“Uh, if the Goddess had any say in this, I think I’d be dead,” Hubert murmurs. “Seeing how she’s dueling our General to the death — ”

The pegasus neighs and now that Hubert is close and out of death’s passage, he understands. “Peggles?!” his voice scratches his throat. He looks back to the pegasus and repeats it again. “PEGGLES?!”

The pegasus, Peggles indeed, leans in and licks Hubert’s across the jaw. He grabs the wonderful beautiful gorgeous immaculate creature and kisses her. Edelgard chuckles from behind him, hand still clung to his back, appreciating him. 

“This is good fortune,” Edelgard says calmly, voice steadying. 

Hubert immediately throws one leg over Peggles’ back and pulls himself up, grabbing onto the reins with one hand and reaching for his staff with the other. His eyes fall onto Edelgard. “According to my deceased father, boys don’t ride pegasi but here I am.”

Edelgard grins, “You’d make for a wonderful Dark Flier.”

Hubert smiles, and he thinks it might be the first time he’s smiled with his teeth in ages. “I  _ am  _ a Dark Flier. Do we have an Abyssinian Exam Pass lying around back at Garreg Mach? This must be official.”

Edelgard nods. “So it’s written. Now, go kill Rhea so we can bring Peggles back to Enbarr so she may — pardon my language — shit on your Dad’s grave.”

“Ho ho ho!” Hubert cackles and if his hands weren’t full, he’d be wiping tears from his eyes. “Delicious, I love how you think! Yes, we will do that.”

Peggles kicks off and hits the air hard. The journey to Rhea doesn’t last long, but for a few minutes, Hubert just sorts of exists in his cut-short boyhood that is just now resuming.

**Author's Note:**

> Hubert wanting to be a pegasus knight is actually canon, but I never would have known had it not been for idanato's fics. The game justifies it as Hubert being scared of heights, but we all know that ain't it.
> 
> You can [follow me on Twitter](https://twitter.com/IAmLordMeatwad) for tweets about my cats and fanfic, and [follow me on Insta](https://www.instagram.com/katrinajagelski/) for similar stuff. Occasionally I do live reads for my original fiction and fanfic.


End file.
